29 March 2013

Learning the Winners Mindset from Terry Guo Tai Ming of Foxconn

Learn the attitude and aptitude of successful entrepreneur Terry Guo, founder of Foxconn, world largest contract manufacturer of commutation and electronics systems and devices. Learn his views about the non-teaching value of success and the valuable lessons from failures. Learn how one can scale up to mega size and yet remain agile and flexible. It is not just elephant, but, dinosaur, that can dance.

While Foxconn may not be most profitable and valuable company in the world, its size and speed, in the subcontract manufacturing world of communications and electronics are well-known. If we want to learn how dinosaur, not just elephant, can dance, then we can learn much from Terry Guo, the founder of Foxconn. Many of the consumer electronic devices that you have may have come from Foxconn such as your iPhone, iPod and iPads.

This post is the first of a series on the sayings of Terry Guo gathered through the internet and organized from the view of an entrepreneur hoping to make his business a big success like Terry's.

Here is the mind-map and I have also added similar sayings of other management and business gurus for linking you other relevant sources. Hope you will find them useful.

On Terry's "success as a very bad teacher", there is the contrary view of the Appreciative Inquiry, which advocates careful study into the what and why that make you successful. Fixing what is wrong does not ensure you will win in the next bid. You really have to find out what the customers truly want. We have to watch out for our defect fixing mindset causing us to forget about innovating for the better. See Mind Value: The Mentality & Danger of TQM. Nevertheless, Terry is warning us about the danger of success, especially success that comes easily. It has the tendency to make us proud and make us think that we are right where the reasons for our success may not have anything to do with us at all! e.g. Tsunami or earthquake in certain may affect the supply of certain products and create a temporary rise of demand for your products that is of lesser standards.

Remember, the better thinking mindset if not A or B, but keeping both in dynamic balance. See Thinking Frameworks for better way to think and learn.